The Unbroken Heart
by Bil
Summary: "I've met someone," Simon said, and her heart didn't break – maybe that should have told her something. A reflection on moving on. SimonElizabeth, SheppardWeir. Season 2 spoilers. Oneshot.


**The Unbroken Heart  
**by Bil!

T – EW/JS, EW/SW – Romance, mild Angst – Complete

Summary: "I've met someone," Simon said, and her heart didn't break – maybe that should have told her something. A reflection on moving on. Simon/Elizabeth, Sheppard/Weir. Oneshot.

Spoilers: _The Intruder_ (Season 2)

Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the crazy brain that comes up with this stuff. Seriously: Help Me.

A/N: Set during _The Intruder_. I don't try to be shippy (in fact, I generally try not to be) but something about this and the episode before it sent me into strange realms of thought.

* * *

"_I've met someone." _

_Her heart didn't break. Maybe that should have told her something._

* * *

"I've met someone."

Her heart didn't break. She didn't collapse in a flood of tears or make a scene. Instead Elizabeth turned away and went quite still, trying to take it in. Simon was mercifully silent and she prayed he would say nothing. What could he say? The sound of his soft footsteps leaving the room filled her with a relief so great she felt light-headed, then he was gone and there was just her. Alone. She stared at the candle on the table, almost not trembling, and then reached out to carefully, deliberately snuff out the flickering flame, giving up on the elegant dinner she had worked so hard on. Giving up on her hopes.

She ate alone, filling the silence of the empty house with a _Simpsons_ rerun but taking none of it in.

Still her heart didn't break. For the first time she almost admitted why.

Paranoia set in: Had Simon really met someone or was that just his way of letting her off easily? Had he somehow sensed—She slammed down her fork, refusing to finish the thought.

Simon wasn't coming to Atlantis. He had given up on her.

_Now_ the tears came, thick and fast. Elizabeth pushed her plate away and laid her head on her arms, sobbing. She'd needed Simon to come with her. _Needed_ him. And for the first time since she'd met him he had let her down.

She hadn't expected this. Even though going into the Atlantis mission they had all known they might very well not get home, she had never truly believed it. She'd told him not to wait for her and yet she was surprised that he'd taken her at her word. Always in the back of her mind had been the illogical certainty that somehow this would be just a quick tour of duty, no different to Palestine or China or Kuwait, and so couldn't, wouldn't harm the relationship she had with Simon, which had always had its moments of long distance. Why should this particular mission be any different?

Never mind that she wasn't even going to be in her home galaxy, never mind that they were leaving with no way to return. Somehow she hadn't believed this was different and there had been a comfortable picture in the back of her mind of coming home to where faithful, reliable Simon was waiting for her with open arms. They would separate briefly and then, as ever, fit back into their old boxes. Only suddenly she didn't fit any more.

Simon had given up waiting – and she had come back home to find that it _wasn't_ home.

Simon and home. She'd dreamed of them, longed for them, pictured them when things got dark and scary and she needed some reassurance or a goal to work for. She'd clung to Simon's memory all of that long, terrifying, wonderful year, a flimsy shield to protect her from the unthinkable. How dare he take that away from her! How could he just remove the last thing tying her to this galaxy, the only real defence she had against—

It had been a shock to come face to face with him again after so long. The moment she had dreamed of (forced herself to dream of) since the day she'd left – and the sight of him inspired nothing in her. No feelings at all. She'd loved him and yet now that he stood before her she looked at him critically – comparing him unfavourably, in fact, to another man. His eyes were too soft, his chin too weak, his handsomeness too insipid. Rather than force herself to realise how much things had changed, she tried to reassure herself that it was just his new hairstyle. Why had he grown his hair? It looked ridiculous, waving about his face like that. He should have kept to a short style, like—She cut off the thought and assured herself that it was just the hair and really she _was_ happy to see him.

But his welcome kiss was as bland as his face and Elizabeth panicked. She couldn't believe it, didn't want to believe it. They could not have changed so much so quickly; she wouldn't allow it to be this way because she needed him. She needed him and so she desperately tried to convince him to come to Atlantis with her. Maybe she no longer felt that spark between them, but they had trust and respect and friendship. That was enough, wasn't it? It was a solid base for a relationship, it had to be, and she was certain that they could make it work.

They had to, because she needed him. That was why she was so frantic to persuade him to join her team. She needed him physically there with her because memories just weren't a good enough shield any more. She needed his quiet presence and their comfortable, easy relationship. Simon knew how to back off; he didn't push her if she wanted to be alone. He would never presume upon their relationship to argue with her or defy her. Maybe they didn't have fireworks every time they kissed, maybe her heart didn't leap in her breast at the sight of him, but who needed that? That was dangerous, that kind of passion, and burnt itself out quickly leaving nothing. Better to have Simon's placid good humour rather than a tempestuous, turbulent relationship.

_Simon_ didn't argue with her as often as he agreed with her or get himself caught up in the worst of whatever danger happened to be available. Simon didn't make her heart constrict with horror because he was dead dead _dead_. He didn't make her knees go stupidly weak with relief when he somehow (amazingly, miraculously) reappeared alive. Simon didn't fill her sleep with nightmares of close escapes.

Simon wasn't military, didn't have an entirely different set of priorities and an alien mindset and as much stubbornness as she did. He didn't make her so blazingly furious that she would delight in murdering him or follow her in wordless comfort when she wanted to be alone (but needed something more). He didn't do stupid, idiotic things and then shrug at her and smile lopsidedly with shame but not apology. He didn't look at her with a boy's wonder in his eyes and beg to be allowed to play with some new technology (toy) they had found.

Simon hadn't supported her, argued with her, helped her, defied her, protected her, infuriated her, fought for her. Simon hadn't stood at her side for a trouble-filled year (had it really been so short a time?) while they forged a new community and a new home in a place where they were the aliens and they never had the answers and yet they still managed to become a symbol of hope.

Simon kept her grounded. She needed that; she needed to be kept from losing (tenuous) control of something that had never been within her control. She needed to be grounded, she knew that (even if sometimes she dreamed of unclipping her wings and soaring with the pegasus that flew on her official jacket). But if she didn't even have the _memories _of Simon to protect her any longer…

Elizabeth didn't know what to do any more. She lay in her bed, staring at a familiar ceiling, surrounded by familiar things – but this wasn't her bed and this wasn't her room. She was three million light-years away from those things, and she curled into a ball around the hard knot of pain in her stomach, because it wasn't supposed to be this way. She had failed in some intangible, indefinable way when _that_ was home and _this_ was just a pleasant place to visit. When the man she had loved turned from her and walked away and left her with nothing.

She wanted to chase after Simon, to run down the dark streets in search of him so that she could beg him to come back and protect her from herself. She needed him to be the barrier between her and the darkling, dazzling depths within. Simon was safe, he was her link to the normal world that she couldn't quite seem to connect to any more. Simon didn't turn her emotions upside down and make her angry and laughing all at the same time. Simon wasn't dangerous, and because of that he was her protection against someone who was.

_(They'd tried to take him away from her. They'd tried to _replace_ him, as if he was just any soldier, when it was the two of them, he and she together, who had forged an alliance and built up a community and a way of life. She'd fought them, of course she had fought them. It had been instinctive, that urge to protect him and keep him by her side. How could they not see what he was? If they hadn't given in she would have resigned – not because she couldn't carry on without him (she was quite capable of commanding without him), but because she didn't _want_ to do it without him._

_That was perhaps when she realised just how much trouble she might be in.)_

It wasn't fair to Simon. She knew that, knew that she had to let him go if he wanted to leave. If she had managed to convince him to stay she would have clung to him as the protection he was, but he hadn't chosen her. And because she _had _loved him, she managed not to beg him – because he deserved better than that, he deserved someone who would love him and not use him. She had done her damndest to get him to join her, but when that had failed she had to give up and accept their divergent paths. She could almost not blame him for not agreeing to join her. Had he asked her to stay on Earth she would have refused without a thought, without a regret. Maybe that was why he hadn't asked; perhaps he was wiser than she would ever be. Faithful, reliable Simon who deserved more than she could ever give him. But she _needed_ him. Needed that bulwark against losing herself to something beyond her control. And she resented him for taking away his protection, his safety. No more excuses any more.

Elizabeth went to her meetings with generals and colonels and civilians, trudging her way through the paperwork and debriefings that had piled up after a year's absence, but she wasn't really there. Her body spoke the correct words and did the proper things, but her mind was circling around one solitary problem. If she didn't have Simon, what did she have? And if she had no shield any more, how could she defend herself?

For a breath or two she almost considered resigning, running away to some isolated corner of the Earth. It would be easier, wouldn't it? No Wraith, no city under her command, nothing to protect herself against. Yet even as she tried to picture it, the image wouldn't come. How could she give up on the people she had worked with, fought for, lived and breathed and bled with? She couldn't, any more than she could voluntarily exile herself from a place that had become more of a home than home was. Atlantis was _hers_. She had made it, shaped it, pushed it into being.

She passed John in the corridor, on their way to separate meetings. They weren't given a chance to stop and talk, but he gave her an eloquent look of shared misery and commiseration, his eyes laughing a little. She smiled back, unable to help herself, buoyed by the sight of his familiar, self-assured walk and the feeling of his electric presence – and then they were past each other, going their separate ways. Smiling to herself, Elizabeth knew that above all else she couldn't make a choice that would cut him out of her life, even if she couldn't admit, even to herself, why.

_(The pair of them were more than just two. They had fought side by side and been prepared to die together. She had protected their people and he had defended them. They had argued with each other and rallied together, failed to communicate and spoken without words. He was a walking contradiction and confused her incredibly, but she couldn't imagine doing this without him._

_She hadn't meant for it to happen. His was an accidental appointment, she hadn't even been supposed to be working so closely with him. But he was there and they worked together – and it _worked_. They worked._

_It scared her more than anything else in her entire life.)_

Fin

2007


End file.
